


Breaking Point

by caffeinatedmusing



Category: Baldur's Gate, Forgotten Realms
Genre: BG1 NPC Project mod, Betrayal, Canon Compliant, Confrontations, Doppelgangers galore, F/M, Fighting for Survival, Grief/Mourning, Loss of Parent(s), Post-Break Up, Returning Home, Trust Issues, but failing, chapter six quests related, how to get framed for murder, jaheira is trying but someone died and left her in charge of these idiot children, modded BG, pc is trying to keep her shit together, xan being fatalistic and depressed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:14:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23103067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caffeinatedmusing/pseuds/caffeinatedmusing
Summary: Brenna has returned to Candlekeep with her new companions in their effort to track the high level players of the Iron Throne and collect evidence of their treachery for Duke Eltan. Nostalgia at her homecoming is short lived as darker, more immediate plots begin to unfold. While going through her late foster fathers possessions, she comes across disturbing information about her parentage. Her trust in everything and everyone she has ever known is about to be shaken to the core.
Relationships: Female Charname/Xan, Jaheira/Khalid, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Kudos: 10





	Breaking Point

**Author's Note:**

> Playing old games for the nostalgia again and...damn it! I had forgotten how much fun this game was. Anyway, this uses the BG1 npc project mod which I'm enjoying so far. The Xan/fpc romance is one aspect of that mod. 
> 
> you can find it here; https://www.gibberlings3.net/mods/npcs/bg1npc/
> 
> I wrote this instead of doing literally any of the things I was supposed to do. Like cooking, or laundry, or taxes, or the next chapters for my three other wips....

Brenna races down the stairs, pivoting on the last step from memory to swing around in the direction of the table where her friends are waiting. She brandishes the letter in her fist as she approaches, the paper tearing beneath her fingers. 

“Did you know?!” Her heart is pounding so hard she has to force the words out past clenched teeth. 

The few other people still on the upper floor swiftly make themselves scarce; her voice is too loud, too strained, with too much emotion. This is a library, after all. Their delicate scholars sensibilities are no doubt scandalized.

Jaheira remains sitting were she and Khalid and the others had waited; a long reading table surrounded by chairs. She doesn't so much as flinch at Brenna's tone. Something in her posture sharpens, however, travel fatigue dropping into a not quite pre-battle readiness. Beside her, Khalid shifts, uncomfortable, and raises pacifying hands. He opens his mouth to speak and Brenna cuts him off.

 _“DID YOU KNOW?!_

Xan breaks into an ice cold sweat at her tone. She raises her voice on the battlefield or to be heard over the din of an atonal bard in a crowded common room. He's heard her cry out in pain or fear or alarm. Never this raw shriek jagged with hysteria. Her eyes are too wide, whites showing around the edges. She reminds him of a spooked horse about to bolt. 

Kivan's picked up on it too, his eyes track her, hands loose and ready to move if necessary. 

Imoen comes down the stairs after her, tears streaking her face. She sees the stand off and ducks to the edge of a bookshelf. The way she braces her hands against it, it's as if the shelf is holding her up. 

“Brenna...?” She begins and ends all in one breath.

“Did we know what?” Jaheira won't contest anything until she knows what is going on. 

She and Khalid exchange a glance of mutual uncertainty. They both have a hunch about what this might be; it relates to Brenna and Gorion, after all.

“Did you know? What I was?” The rage crumbles and she's just a woman again, brokenhearted and sobbing, tears dripping from her chin, black eyes bloodshot and wet. “Did he tell you?”

That's almost worse than her rage.

Xan's never seen her cry. He wants to bundle her up in a warm blanket and hold her, pet her hair, kiss her tears away, soothe whatever caused all this hurt. But he lost that right the night he broke up with her. The unhealing wound of that is a hot ball of pain in his chest and stomach that he has to swallow down every day since. Every time he meets her eyes. He wants to take back all the horrid lies, the hurtful things he said to push her away. But he can't. He won't. He can't stop how he feels. How much losing her will hurt. Has hurt him. But if she hates him, then maybe his death wont hurt her so much. He can bear the pain if it spares her some later. That's all he has left to hope for, really. 

Except whatever Gorion left her in that letter has ripped into her in a way nothing else ever has and left her on the verge of breaking apart. He wants to fall on his knees before her, beg her forgiveness, tell her it will be alright, that he still loves her, that he'll always love her. But he can't. So he sits motionless and so tense that when he gets up all his joints will creak. 

“That I....I'm....” Her breath hitches, her whole body shuddering.

_What she was?!_

_What are you?_ He had asked her that. Just...blurted it out, graceless and tactless and ...she had taken it for a bad attempt at flirting. Back when they had been doing that sort of thing.

Here may be his answer. Because Brenna hadn't known then. She had been surprised when he'd told how her magic felt. Those void black undercurrents that hadn't felt right at all. She'd apologized. Even though he believed her when she had claimed to be unaware of doing anything at all. Apologized for something that he belatedly realized might be an intrinsic part of her. Unintentional. A mystery he had never gotten around to solving. He hadn't wanted to learn like this.

“That my father was _Bhaal?_ ”

 _What?!_ The clammy nervous sweat dries in an instant and leaves him frozen through to his bones. _It can't be....she can't be....._

Another look passes between Jaheira and Khalid. Kivan frowns at Brenna as though he's never seen her before.

“Bhaal? So you are one of the....No. We did not know. We suspected he was an ongoing concern. Gorion changed his life to take you in. He gave up traveling, rarely left this keep. Every time we were in contact, he'd ask if we were followed, had anyone been digging for information on your mother or you. We knew your father was dangerous; he attacked your mother, after all, and was never caught. I think Gorion meant to tell us the rest when we met up. But, of course, then he died. It's good that he wrote it down.”

“He knew...” Imoen stood away from the bookcase, swiping at her tears with back of one hand. Her makeup is smeared. It makes her look much younger. Like a teenager playing dress up. “It says he knew he was gonna die.”

“H-he had r-reason to think that sssomeone meant Brenna or himself h-harm.” Khalid interjected, nerves making his stutter worse. “It is n-not unreasonable to think-think that he m-might have pre-pre-prepared for such an event-tuality. 

“I understand it may seem dramatic to you.” Jaheira still sat as calm as a sculpture. “But if Gorion had not done so, we would be missing vital information. We knew Brenna was the intended target the night Gorion was slain. We did not know why. Now we do.”

She stands then and moves out from around the table. Xan wonders what she will do. She isn't the most comforting person he's ever met so no matter how much Brenna might need a hug right now, Jaheira seems an unlikely source. He never finds out, though, because at that moment one of the elder researchers and several watchers march up the stairs and surround them and they are arrested for, of all things, murdering Rieltar and his cronies, who they had deliberately backed down from fighting. Too many innocents potentially caught in the way and not enough time to explain their side or gather any allies here. Not that the result would be any different, but there is a certain indignity to being accused of a thing you didn't do. Something about how soon everyone is willing to believe their guilt niggles at Xan's mind, but with all else that's going on he can't quite focus. 

The day doesn't get any better from there, though Xan had no illusions that it might, given what had already come to pass. 

One ally does come forward. They escape through the catacombs beneath the keep. Xan watches Brenna out of the corners of his eyes. He hasn't even begun to process what being a daughter of Bhaal might make her. What he feels about all this. What he knows is that that they are all bloody and filthy and exhausted and that since their arrest, Brenna's face has been an expressionless mask. That mask terrifies him because he doesn't know what's behind it now.

It begins to crack apart as doppelganger after doppelganger appear from shadowed alcoves and dark niches, wearing the faces of people she knows. The people who raised her, people she loves. 

He watches it all get twisted and stabbed into her heart over and over and over again as they cut through the deceptions. Every memory she has of this place, things she said, people she trusted, its all being used against her. Brenna takes point, Imoen at her side and they cut a single-minded path through it all. The others are hard pressed to keep up. Even though Brenna doesn't know where's she's going. None of them do.

They are trying to drive her mad, Xan realizes. Whoever is behind their framing, likely this Sarevok mentioned in the letter, Rieltar and the others. They have the political and financial power to engineer it. But what motive? Her heritage? That seems the only unusual or unique thing about her. Why?

_Because they couldn't use her. She was too strong willed, too good of a person. So they have to either break her and see what they might rebuild from the ruins, or destroy her so she can't keep getting in the way of their plans._

If they survive, Xan knows she will never be quite the same. In all his fatalistic worrying, in all his endeavors to protect her from the pain of love severed by death, he never once considered it might not happen that way. 

He is bound to his sword. He knows where his soul will end up when he dies and it isn't going to be in any kind of peaceful afterlife.

He had thought to lose Brenna to a sword cut, an arrow. Spider poison. A mages spell. The reckless habit she has of rushing in without considering what her instinct to protect others will do to her. Gods, they should have died at least two dozen times here in these forsaken catacombs _today_. 

Madness, though, he hadn't considered. Turned to a tool for Sarevok and his ilk to use. A weapon created to commit murder in her fathers name. 

_Her nightmares_....Now his as well.

For the first time, Xan wonders if death is really the worst way to lose someone.


End file.
